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Lot Essay
The Post-impressionist painter Pierre Bonnard moved to Le Cannet in the south of France with his partner Marthe de Méligny in 1924. Some four years later, he executed this luminous vision of the verdant landscape surrounding the neighboring town of Saint-Tropez. The artist used pure, unblended pigments to capture the radiant hues of nature: a lavender and violet sky, dappled with blood orange clouds, above an azure blue mountain range and undulating hills of emerald and jade. This exquisite, distinctly Mediterranean color palette was a signature of Bonnard's work.
Bonnard first visited Saint-Tropez in 1904, and he remained enchanted by the town for several decades thereafter. His landscape paintings reflect his total artistic and philosophical immersion in the Côte d'Azur. In the 1940s, Bonnard wrote to the Fauvist painter Henri Matisse, "During my morning walks I amuse myself by defining different conceptions of landscape, landscape as 'space', intimate landscape, decorative landscape, etc. But as for vision I see things differently every day, the sky, objects, everything changes continually, you can drown in it. But that's what life's about" (quoted in R.R. Brettell, P.H. Tucker and N.H. Lee, Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Paintings in the Robert Lehman Collection, New York, 2009, p. 187).
Unlike the Impressionist landscape painters of the previous generation, however, Bonnard did not always paint en plein air, directly in front of his subject. His nephew later recalled sharing one of the aforementioned walks with the artist, and described how Bonnard was freshly inspired by a familiar view after a rainstorm: "He took a little piece of paper out of his pocket and he made a sketch, and later he painted a picture from it. That was how he worked. He painted nature always from memory, after his walks" (quoted in J. Baxter, French Riviera and Its Artists: Art, Literature, Love, and Life on the Côte d'Azur, New York, 2015, p. 141).
R.R. Figgis, Esq., an Irish collector of modern art, lent this canvas to several important international exhibitions in the mid-twentieth century, including a Bonnard retrospective that traveled to the Royal Academy in London and the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris.
Bonnard first visited Saint-Tropez in 1904, and he remained enchanted by the town for several decades thereafter. His landscape paintings reflect his total artistic and philosophical immersion in the Côte d'Azur. In the 1940s, Bonnard wrote to the Fauvist painter Henri Matisse, "During my morning walks I amuse myself by defining different conceptions of landscape, landscape as 'space', intimate landscape, decorative landscape, etc. But as for vision I see things differently every day, the sky, objects, everything changes continually, you can drown in it. But that's what life's about" (quoted in R.R. Brettell, P.H. Tucker and N.H. Lee, Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Paintings in the Robert Lehman Collection, New York, 2009, p. 187).
Unlike the Impressionist landscape painters of the previous generation, however, Bonnard did not always paint en plein air, directly in front of his subject. His nephew later recalled sharing one of the aforementioned walks with the artist, and described how Bonnard was freshly inspired by a familiar view after a rainstorm: "He took a little piece of paper out of his pocket and he made a sketch, and later he painted a picture from it. That was how he worked. He painted nature always from memory, after his walks" (quoted in J. Baxter, French Riviera and Its Artists: Art, Literature, Love, and Life on the Côte d'Azur, New York, 2015, p. 141).
R.R. Figgis, Esq., an Irish collector of modern art, lent this canvas to several important international exhibitions in the mid-twentieth century, including a Bonnard retrospective that traveled to the Royal Academy in London and the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris.